His raving
over the grave is not _mere_ acting. On the contrary, that passage is
the best card that the believers in Hamlet's madness have to play. He is
really almost beside himself with grief as well as anger, half-maddened
by the impossibility of explaining to Laertes how he has come to do what
he has done, full of wild rage and then of sick despair at this wretched
world which drives him to such deeds and such misery. It is the same
rage and despair that mingle with other feelings in his outbreak to
Ophelia in the Nunnery-scene. But of all this, even if he were clearly
conscious of it, he cannot speak to Horatio; for his love to Ophelia is
a subject on which he has never opened his lips to his friend.
If we realise the situation, then, we shall, I think, repress the wish
that Hamlet had 'made some other defence' than that of madness. We shall
feel only tragic sympathy.
* * * * *
As I have referred to Hamlet's apology, I will add a remark on it from a
different point of view. It forms another refutation of the theory that
Hamlet has delayed his vengeance till he could publicly convict the
King, and that he has come back to Denmark because now, with the
evidence of the commission in his pocket, he can safely accuse him.
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